Ken Burns discusses his new documentary The American Revolution.

2 hours ago7 min read

After a decade of meticulous development, the preeminent documentarian Ken Burns prepares to unveil his monumental six-part series, *The American Revolution*, a project initiated in the final year of the Obama administration and now poised for its November 16 premiere, fortuitously aligning with the nation's impending 250th anniversary commemorations. In a recent discussion on the *Rapid Response* podcast, Burns articulated the profound parallels he discerns between the fractious revolutionary era and our contemporary political climate, suggesting that a clear-eyed examination of our origin story—stripped of the sentimental barnacles that often encrust it—can illuminate the artificial divisions of the present.His approach is a deliberate counterweight to superficial celebrations; he delves into the brutal, six-and-a-half-year conflict's visceral reality, where cannon fire and bayonets wrought horrific casualties, far from the gallant mythologies. Burns expressed unequivocal admiration for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s *Hamilton*, which he hailed as the greatest cultural event of this young century, a phenomenal work that has gifted history teachers a generation of students who can recite the tensions between Federalists and Jeffersonians with glee.Yet, he draws a stark professional distinction: where Miranda, like Shakespeare before him, exercises poetic license to achieve higher fictional truths, Burns’s documentary mandate demands strict accuracy, a commitment to fitting the 'round peg of truth into the square hole of art. ' This ethos, he argues, is not merely academic but foundational to functional society, akin to the non-negotiable arithmetic required to build an airplane or manage a corporate ledger.In an age often described as 'post-truth,' Burns is an unyielding polemicist for fact, asserting that while the internet amplifies lies, one plus one must always equal two. His narrative grapples with the complex heroism of flawed figures like George Washington, a commander who made grave tactical errors—exposing flanks at Long Island and Brandywine—yet possessed the singular, indispensable ability to inspire a disparate collection of colonies toward a unified American identity. This historical analysis, rendered with the gravitas of a Churchillian reflection, posits that understanding the raw, contested truth of our founding—a time of equal, if not greater, division—is not an exercise in nostalgia but a necessary inoculation against the manipulative forces that continually seek to reshape reality for political ends.

#Ken Burns

#The American Revolution

#documentary

#history

#featured

#American history

#filmmaking

#truth in storytelling

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